Obesity is growing faster than any other public health issue in America. If current trends continue, 103 million American adults will be considered obese by 2018. The U.S. is expected to spend $344 billion on health care costs attributable to obesity in 2018.
Obesity-related direct expenditures are expected to account for more than 21 percent of the nation's direct health care spending in 2018. Obesity has become an epidemic with no signs of slowing down. Solving this problem starts with motivation and our current methods of motivating people to exercise are obviously not working; the obesity numbers are getting worse.
The problem of lack of motivation to exercise has been partially solved by the implementation of video gaming while exercising. Inventions disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,328,119 to Pryor on Feb. 5, 2008; U.S. Pat. No. 7,693,584 to Pryor on Apr. 6, 2010; and U.S. Pat. No. 8,306,635 to Pryor on Nov. 6, 2012 all address exercise motivation through the use of video gaming, and Pryor compares his invention to an improvement of Nintendo games. A problem with the use of gaming for exercise motivation is that it appeals to a much smaller and younger population; not the target age group that most needs to lose weight and that is costing our healthcare industry an exorbitant amount of money.
Our target ages to combat the obesity epidemic are between the years 25 to 60. This is the age population that is overweight or obese. Although using gaming as a means to encourage children and teenagers to exercise may in fact prove to be successful, it fails to solve the problems of low self-esteem and lack of motivation that can be accomplished by the proposed invention by creating positive emotions in the user, by increasing the user's internal dialog and by awakening the user's desire for autonomy and self-determination as disclosed here. University studies show that affecting someone's intrinsic motivation and improving upon their self-efficacy has proven to drastically motivate people to exercise long term and it also affects their diet choices. In addition, my findings indicate that a thinner, more appealing image a person sees of himself while exercising remains in his mind long after the completion of his workout, often while he selects food while shopping and when dining at restaurants. It is my belief that a person's food choices will not be improved by gaming nor will gaming enhance the user emotionally or intrinsically. My findings show and universities prove that the psychology affected by the present invention will have a profound effect on a person's motivation to exercise and diet choices.
Pryor's inventions claim that the user can see a projected image of himself in the future as a result of his inputted exercise routine and diet plan, for example 30 minutes for 3 times a week and a selected diet plan. But such inventions fail to motivate the user because they do not provide a real-time image of the user getting thinner and more attractive the harder and faster he walks or runs on the treadmill, for example, as disclosed herein. One key is the direct connection between the harder the user exercises the thinner the image gets that is portrayed to the user in real time while exercising as disclosed in this invention. Pryor's invention has a disadvantage in that it does not affect or engage the user in this way while exercising. Pryor's invention does not include an image of the user improving in relation to the intensity of the exercise then being performed which, if included, would encourage the user to work harder. Some people simply cannot imagine what a thinner them would look like. By showing them their payoff in advance by displaying a thinner image in real-time while exercising, they are more motivated to exercise much harder and longer than they would be otherwise.
Pryor's Continuation Patent Application US2013/0190135, published on Jul. 25, 2013, further addresses user motivation and rehabilitation regimens through remote instruction. I find that using instruction to exercise may be useful in the short term, but it fails to solve the problem of self-determination and autonomy within in the user, thereby creating positive long term beneficial diet and exercise habits.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,876,368 to Craig et al. on Jan. 25, 2011 teaches a sliming effect method for digital photographs. Such a system makes no mention of use with real-time video alteration of a scene captured by a camera. Further, such a method makes no mention of modifying certain areas of an image (such as the thickness of a person's upper arms or size of their chin, for example). As such, use of such a system for displaying in real-time a motivational image of an exerciser who is exercising in front of a camera is not possible. Further, such a method does not predict a future, thinner appearance for a person based on their current appearance, a known previous appearance, and a particular combination of diet and exercise plans over a given time.
Pedometers such as FitBit (http://www.fitbit.com), Jawbone (http://jawbone.com), and Runkeeper (www.runkeeper.com) attempt to track the number of steps the user takes in a given period of time. They are intended to assist the user in being aware of the amount of exercise he is getting and by keeping a journal of diet and exercise. However, such devices do not motivate the user to exercise.
Employee wellness programs have proven to help in the battle against weight control and poor health, but I have found a need that exists for creating synergy between the employee, the employer and the healthcare provider that would exponentially increase employee participation. The present invention has significant advantages for personal health care and telemedicine that also saves money for the employee, the employer and the healthcare company. Motivation to exercise, validation of the user and biometric testing are now brought together into a single streamlined flow of information to the wellness program manager, physician and personal trainer in a way that was not available previously, but that is greatly needed.
Current wellness programs rely upon swipe cards that the employee uses when entering the gym and/or a pedometer, such as Fitbit or Jawbone, that tracks everyday activity like the number of steps walked, the amount of distance travelled, the number of stairs climbed and the amount of time a person is active. They also track your diet, weight and sleep. Another pedometer device, Runkeeper, tracks a user's pace, measures the user's workout distance, charts the user's weight loss and includes a GPS system all within an application running on an iPhone, for example. However, these devices do not provide a solution to the number one cause of obesity, which is lack of motivation to exercise and eat properly.
These prior art devices also can fail to accurately validate identify the user. In fact, swipe cards and pedometer devices can be easily manipulated by wellness program participants. For example, a wellness program participant can give his swipe card to a friend who goes to the same fitness center to exercise, thus enabling the inactive wellness program participant to obtain false wellness program credit for exercise performed by another. In similar fashion, an inactive wellness program participant can easily obtain false exercise credit with pedometer devices by lending them to an active friend who registers a high volume of wellness program credit as compared to the inactive participant. Indeed, many pedometer devices can be shaken by an inactive wellness program participant (or her friend) while sitting on the couch watching television, the end result being additional false program credit for the dishonest participant.
There is undoubtedly a need for a device that unmistakably validates the true identity of the user. With the information disclosed herein, the wellness program participant is able to exercise at a convenient and secure place, such as at home or in a hotel, and at a preferred time while registering true wellness program credit. This would save time and money, especially for the working mother, while simultaneously reducing fuel consumption, traffic and pollution. Most wellness programs provide financial incentives for completion of fitness goals and this validation feature would ensure that the program participants that truly deserve this credit would receive it while the dishonest program participants would not.
By using a portable computing device such as an iPad tablet or the like, the employee can enjoy the convenience and security of completing her exercise in hotel gym to receive her wellness program credit and the benefits of more frequent exercise. All of this information is easily transferred over the internet to a wellness manager or medical advisor as a live feed or stored on a computer or remote server such as a cloud-based server in order to obtain data at any time or location.
In a smart-phone application called Wahoo Fitness (http://www.wahoofitness.com), a body band is used around the chest to gather basic information during exercise, such as tracking of the heart rate, calories burned, distance, and speed. Although this may be informative to the user, it's missing the first step in the process which is getting someone motivated to exercise. Further, it fails to motivate and engage the user because it falls short in producing a real time thinner image of the user during her workout routine based on the data that is read from the band or validating the user and providing biometric testing.
Facial recognition applications, such as that available at http://www.fst21.com, are used for identifying a person from a previously stored digital image or video frame of that person. Therefore, it is possible to compare the current facial image of a user to a stored facial of that individual to confirm the identity of the user. FST Biometrics, a company that provides secure access systems to various types of buildings and schools, can integrate its application with security and surveillance systems to validate a person's identity before permitting entry by that person. However, this application addresses the security needs of facilities, while the invention described herein solves the critical needs of the healthcare, diet and fitness industries which are motivation to exercise and validation of the wellness program participant.
The current options to address the need of biometric screening of employees involve either the employee travelling to a medical facility or the use of mobile biometric screening facilities that travel to the workplace. Such prior art solutions are discussed in more detail at http://www.concentra.com/employers/workforce-health-and-well-being/and http://www.wellnesscorporatesolutions.com. Although the latter method provides a level of convenience and efficiency to the employer and employee, the use of computing devices coupled with various health screening peripherals by employees to perform their own biometric screening at home provides the highest level of convenience, efficiency, privacy and participation in favor of both the employee and the employer. Computing devices such as laptops, tablets and cell phones are able to interface with biometric screening devices used in the home to conduct tests to determine cholesterol levels, blood-glucose levels, blood pressure and the like and store and transmit that information to physicians and other medical professionals. Indeed certain test strips that are currently on the market will turn a certain color when a small drop of blood is placed on such a test strip. By scanning this test strip with a cell phone, tablet or laptop camera, the computing device can read these slight color variations on the strips and provide the user with a precise reading of his blood sugar and cholesterol levels. However, the use of such devices at home by the patient, with the current prior art, there is no way to simultaneously confirm the identity of the user as disclosed in the current invention.
Disadvantages that exist in the prior art include disconnection between, for example, the employee needing motivation, the employer needing employee participation, and wellness programs needing to validate the user's identification and biometric testing.
Further, there is a disconnection between the medical community and patients with regard to validation of a patient's exercise performance. Poor self-worth and lack of self-esteem that exist with overweight people often fosters a lack of motivation to exercise, which compounds the problem and our exorbitant health care cost in the US. Further, diabetes and obesity rates on the rise, burdening our healthcare system and the economy in US. Employers lose time at work from employee due to obesity-related illnesses, and employers' costs to have a wellness program in-house is a further expense to the employer.
Therefore, there is a need for a system that can modify in substantially real-time, an image of a user in order to present a motivating image of the user getting thinner, for example. Such a needed system would be able to interface with various exercising machines, and would include an adjustable mount for optimally positioning the electronic device. Further, such a needed device would provide calculations to the user concerning diet and exercise plans needed to achieve a particular estimated appearance within a certain period of time. The present invention accomplishes these objectives.